


Call It Home

by Rhensis



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging & YouTube RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Bands, Angst, Band, Character Death, Child Abuse, Depression, Drugs, I mean, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kinda, M/M, Smoking, Smut, Stalking, Suicide Attempt, can you just see how happy this fic is, idk if it's major or minor character death yet, probably minor but i'll tell you if that changes, sometimes, there is humour, there is humour in the form of a ridiculous about of panic! at the disco references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-07 09:56:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1894746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhensis/pseuds/Rhensis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All he wanted was to be alone for a few hours with his guitar. All he wanted was to get away from everything, to temporarily cease to have all the baggage that comes with the name Phil Lester. Phil Lester: failed musician, crappy cashier, crappier human being. He never expects to find the escape that he really doesn’t need: Dan Howell. Based on Panic! At The Disco’s <i>Northern Downpour</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Prologue: A Falling Out We Won't Tiptoe About**

And if Phil could do it all again, then he would never drive out to the field that night.

That’s what he tells himself, at least. It’s a comforting thought. It was created, of course, over a bottle of booze and with a cigarette resting comfortably between his fingers, but he tries to convince himself that it doesn’t make it any less valid.

He’s quite good at lying to himself. It’s a skill you have to acquire when you leave a train wreck of a life behind you. It’s easier to lie to yourself, to somehow manage to re-write your own memories so that you weren’t the fuck up, you weren’t the reason that everything went wrong.

Well, it’s easier until it gets to five in the morning and you haven’t slept and your eyes are raw from tears that you swear you don’t shed.

That’s the thing about early mornings. There was once a time he cherished them. They were peaceful; they were when he felt at home. There was no one expecting anything of him at five in the morning. It was only him and his guitar against the world. There were times during those mornings where he’d had too much to drink, or he’d maybe smoked something that he shouldn’t have done, when he thought that maybe he actually had a chance against the world. His stupid naivety would shine through, his old innocence and wish to believe that everything in the world was fine.

He needs to pack. Pj and Charlie left half an hour ago, calling behind their shoulders to make sure that Phil didn’t forget to do it. They leave tomorrow, so really he knows that he could probably just throw it all together in the morning and it’ll be fine. All he needs are a few clothes and essentials (his guitars have already been taken and packed), so it will realistically only take about five minutes to get ready, but for some reason he still finds himself dragging his feet towards his wardrobe.

He grabs the duffel bag out of the bottom and throws it on the unmade bed. Ears ringing from the silence, he starts to look through the wardrobe, pulling a few t-shirts off their coat hangers without grace. They get flung behind him onto the bed, ready to be messily folded and packed.

He stops for a moment to bite down on his lip. He isn’t sure how much he actually needs to bring. All he knows is that he’ll be gone for two months, and then he’ll be back for a week, and then he’ll be off again for a month. Then he’ll be going to a studio in London, and he has no idea how long they’ll be there for. As long as it takes to record the next album, he supposes, but he’s barely started working on it yet. He hasn’t got a single song.

That’s another lie. He has plenty of songs that are just lying about – around forty, he reckons. But none of them can be used on the album, he knows that much. They’re not for sharing, not anymore.

After a moment of simply staring at nothing, he shakes his head at himself and grabs a few more t-shirts. Then he pulls out one or two of his button up shirts and tosses them onto the clothes pile.

Next are jeans - three pairs of black skinny jeans and two pairs of more comfortable fitting blue ones join the shirts. He reaches for a final pair, the smartest he owns (and by that he means that they are the ones with the fewest tears and holes), but stops when he feels something crinkle beneath his fingers.

Frowning, he turns them over and digs his hand into the pocket, fumbling around until he finds the folded up paper. His throat goes dry as he turns it over in his fingers, not daring to open it because he knows exactly what he says.

He remembers the day that it arrived. There were thousands of these sold, all of them practically identical, but this one was one of the two that he bought. He should’ve bought three – he’d intended to, but then hands had wrapped around his waist and it had been suggested that a date should be made out of it. The invitation to the third member of their party had been dropped with little hesitation once those words were whispered against the back of his neck.

It was one of the best nights of his life.

He shouldn’t want to forget it. But he does. But he _doesn’t_. He can tell by the fact that he doesn’t tear it up, he doesn’t discard it in the bin next to his bed that is mostly full of the ash that collects at the bottom of the ashtray that he keeps on his bedside table, that he doesn’t want to forget. Carefully, he opens a drawer and puts the ticket on top of the only notebook that he hasn’t filled completely before discarding.

Hands trembling a little, he sits down on the mattress and reaches for the box of tobacco. There’s a small pack of white papers tucked inside of it, and he pulls that out, taking one of them between his fingers.

He draws in a breath between his teeth as he pinches some of the rather foul-smelling substance and starts to roll for himself. It’s hard when his fingers are shaking, but he’s done this whilst shit-faced drunk and also whilst in the middle of a panic attack, so he manages it with somewhat remarkable ease.

Then his fingers find the lighter, and he presses down on the wheel. The flame jumps to life, dancing right in front of his eyes, and his stomach turns at the fleeting thought in the back of his mind of how much destruction that small flame could cause. He could drop it right now. It would be easy – just let his fingers relax; stop clinging on to the cold metal. The carpet at his feet would set alight easily, he figures. There’d be nothing stopping it.

Shuddering, he lights the cigarette and closes the lighter, tossing it to his side. There are people expecting him. People up and down the country are waiting for him, waiting to be able to scream his name right to his face.

 _Phil Lester._ Spectacular musician. Womaniser and eternal heartthrob. Flawless human being.

He bites back a bitter laugh. If only they all knew how wrong they were.

He never asked for this. He never _wanted_ this. Yet he still didn’t turn it down, he didn’t say no when it was thrust in front of him in the form of a piece of paper that he quickly realised was a contract. He should have done. If he’d had half the strength that he once thought he did, then he would have said no without a second thought. Fuck the money, fuck the idea of being able to change the world. No one changes the world anyway, not really. Not forever. Everyone’s impression on the world is limited.

If it had been any other day apart from that one he probably would have been able to say no. If Pj and Charlie hadn’t chosen that damn day to turn up with their new ‘associate’, then his words wouldn’t be number one in the chart, and his new album wouldn’t have gone straight to number five. People wouldn’t be expecting anything of him except for what they had always expected – nothing.

He takes a long drag of the cigarette, eyes wandering to his own fingers. They’re yellowed from years of smoking (when did he start? Fourteen? Thirteen? Does it even matter anymore?), and he wonders whether people notice it when they look at him. It’s 2014. Smoking isn’t, and hasn’t been for a long time, considered ‘cool’ or ‘smart’ or whatever word you want to put to it. People are more likely to pity than envy the people that are still addicted to the filthy stuff now. You can see it in non-smokers’ eyes when they look across a street and see crowds of stressed workers draining the life out of themselves with the stuff.

It helps keep him grounded, though. The slight buzz whenever he inhales, the way his head is dizzy for just a moment from the short-lived high. It reminds him that he’s alive, as cliché as it is.

Some people drink. Some people take razors or lighters to their wrists. Some people take copious amounts of pain meds. Some people sleep with every human being within a thirty-mile radius. Some people cry into the shoulder of a loved one. Some people blow their brains out.

He smokes. So what?

Letting out a small cough, he leans forward to use the ashtray on the edge of his side table. The ash falls into it rather forlornly, looking as pathetic as he knows that he does.

He’s about to go on a nationwide tour, and yet he is sat alone in his room at eleven in the evening choking his lungs. Pathetic certainly is the correct word.

Growling in the back of his throat, he presses the remains of his cigarette against the edge of the ashtray, snubbing out the flame. He then leaves it at the bottom of the glass dish, before standing up and making his way back to the wardrobe.

He pushes the clothes out of the way. The hangers scrape against the metal rail and the sound makes him flinch and his skin crawl, but he keeps going nonetheless. He fumbles around somewhat blindly, searching for what he needs.

And then he finds it, and for a moment he’s not sure whether it’s actually the last thing he needs. His fingers close around the familiar neck of the familiar guitar, and the strings dig into his palms.

He pulls out the guitar with a small grunt, the muscles on his arm straining as he tries to tug it out from between his various belongings. It’s not exactly anything special by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s the one that he had that night in the field, which really makes it more special than any other guitar he owns.

Clearing his throat, he sits down on the bed with the wood clutched in his hands.

His fingers go to pluck at the strings, but then he stops. He stops, holds his breath, and closes his eyes.

This isn’t where he should be right now.

His eyes snap back open. Glancing at the watch on his wrist, he stands up and fumbles around again in the back of the wardrobe. He finds the guitar case with relative ease, pulling it out with a small huff and laying it down on his bed. The instrument fits in it snugly, of course, and he doesn’t even give his unpacked clothes a passing glance before gripping the handle of the case, snatching up a packet of cigarettes and bolting down his own hallway.

His car keys are hanging on a small hook by the side of the door. He tries not to look at it as he reaches up for the keys, stomach lurching as he remembers the look on the face of the boy who put that hook there. _You’d loose even your own head if it wasn’t attached to you, Phil. Look, this’ll make things much easier. Just remember to actually put your keys on the hook, and you’ll always know where they are_.

Nauseated isn’t a strong enough term to describe how he feels at the slither of memory.

Shaking his head, he closes his fingers around the metal and slams his front door shut behind him.

“Fuck,” he mumbles under his breath when the chilling wind bites at his bare fingers the second he takes a step out of his house. The front lawn is frosted over, making the abandoned plants looking oddly pretty in the final glimmers of sunlight. It takes him a few tries to get the ever stiff latch on the gate to open, and he swears out loud again at the rust cutting into his finger.

He looks down at the wound, the blood already pooling on the surface of his skin. It’ll probably get infected. He doesn’t care.

_Come on, Phil, we’ll get you a plaster or a bandage or whatever. Does it hurt? Don’t cry, Phil, please-_

Gritting his teeth, he all but throws his guitar onto the backseat of his car, and then throws himself into the front seat afterwards. The keys are already in the ignition, and he blinks away the tears sparked by the fact that even when he’s not here, Phil can hear him anyway.

It’s not that long a drive, but it takes him longer than it should. He gets lost at least twice, and he swears at himself with frustration. He even has to stop the car once so that he can get out to walk it off. The roads are abandoned, so he knows that if he gets truly lost then he’s fucked, but at the same time, does he really care? That’d make for a good headline. Front man of rising stars _The Leeches_ goes missing on country drive. No trace found.

He’d probably be made into some kind of martyr or something. Album sales would skyrocket. He’d at least be leaving his band mates behind with a fuck load of money.

Eventually, however, by some twist of fate, he finds the familiar old side road, and he doesn’t even have to think about this part of the navigation. Within minutes he’s where he needs to be, and he takes a step out of the car without hesitation.

He can remember how this was once the only place that he could breathe. Now, the peaceful silence is suffocating and the clean air is making his lungs feel heavy. He glances over at where the daisies usually grow, untamed and unruly, in the spring, and winces when he remembers how they made daisy chains together. _Here, you’ll look pretty with a crown, see! You’re like a fucking princess, Phil._

The sky is still the same, and the constellations are starting to appear, but it feels like their place in the sky is much less one of mystery and more one of torment. These aren’t just his stars anymore. Somewhere out there, there’s probably another boy staying at them too, perhaps even feeling some of the same sense of loss.

That’s wishful thinking. In the mind of that other boy, he’s probably long forgotten. As he should be, really.

Biting on his tongue, he reaches for the handle of his car door. It gets jammed for a moment, and he’s about to lose his rag with it when it finally opens, leaving him stumbling backwards from the momentum. It doesn’t faze him particularly, though, and within seconds he’s reaching for the guitar, unzipping the bag and trying to ignore the fact that he caught a glimpse of paper in the bottom of the case that he knows is covered in _his_ handwriting.

The instrument goes first. He’s delicate with it, placing it on top of the roof of his car carefully. He hauls himself up afterwards, struggling a little with his own weight. Once he’s up, he doesn’t waste any time in gripping the instrument in his hands.

He can remember thinking, once, about how his lyrics reflect whatever is pumping through his veins. Tonight, it’s a cocktail flooding his body, a deadly one of depression and love and anger and hatred. Yet, despite all that, he doesn’t sing a single word, not yet. Instead, he just strums, playing out the chords or the melodies of such random songs. Songs that he yet to write, songs that he wrote long before, songs that he wrote during, all of them pour from his fingertips, streaming out like the tears down his cheeks.

His mouth opens, words stuck in his throat. It’s funny, how there are so many things that he has to say, so many things that usually he would just sing out and be done with, and yet he can’t even sing a single word.

“Hey moon,” he begins finally, voice cracking and quiet. He closes his eyes, stopping his playing and just glancing up at the sky. “Please forget to fall down. Hey moon, don’t you go down,” he pleads, but his words are lost in the vastness of a planet that doesn’t even care.

He stops. He’s left with nothing, only the ringing of his ears in the silence that is too loud for him. This was a bad idea, this was-

He slams his hand against his guitar, screeching out in pain as he does. In the back of his mind he thinks that maybe if he breaks his hand he won’t have to go on tour, but that wouldn’t solve the problem. There’d be another tour. And another tour. And then an album to make. And then another goddamn tour.

This is it. This is what his life is now.

This isn’t what he wanted. And maybe, if he just hadn’t driven out to the damn field that night, then he wouldn’t have this stupid life. Maybe he wouldn’t have the one solution he can think to it running through his head as he looks forlornly at a tree not far from him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry about the wait! i actually had most of this chapter sorted on time, i just hadn't quite finished it for personal reasons and then i got caught up in the last week of school so i haven't been able to finalise it. i hope you like it despite the delay :) (oh and btw with this fic there is the opportunity to play 'spot the Panic! At The Disco reference' so have fun with it ayy)

**Part One: A Broken Bone**

**Chapter One: A Regular Decorated Emergency**

Fame is blinding in a way that comes only second to those high-powered studio lights that are shoved into the faces of those who are finally finding their fame. Actually finding fame, he thinks, is less blinding and more of a spiral into madness. Nothing else matters when you’re searching for your big break, because how can it? After all, the whole world is at your fingertips, right? There’s always a way for you to make it in this world, no matter who you are.

Pretentious bullshit. That’s what it is. He gave up on his fame the day he gave up on his band, and he doesn’t regret it for a second. That band was suffocating. Waking up every day was like taking deep breaths of the smoke of the fire that they (well, Charlie) had accidentally caused one night in their makeshift home studio, and he doesn’t miss that feeling at all.

It had taken them months to get together the money to replace the equipment, despite how all of it was the cheapest shit they could find. He still has a lot of the new stuff they bought, but now it’s tucked away in cardboard boxes under his bed, gathering dust. They’d been using it for six months, eight days and twenty hours before they – _he_ – decided to call it quits for good.

None of the others had been expecting it, he doesn’t think. He would be lying if he said that he felt even a trace of guilt, though. Seeing his lifelong friends lose all of their hopes for fame simply because he couldn’t do it anymore should have been soul-crushing. It wasn’t. That probably tells him more than anything else that it was the right decision.

They tried to continue without him, but of course it was hopeless. Pj can sing, sure, but he’s nothing particularly special. They attempted having Em sing as a female lead, but it never worked with the songs that they still had under their belt. _His_ songs. Written for his voice, and his voice alone. Ultimately, their downfall was that they could never match his lyrics, and they didn’t know how to find a style of their own.

He was that band, as arrogant as it sounds. He still would be to this day if he hadn’t just felt so damn trapped. Fame is pure insanity, and it wasn’t a world he wanted to end up in, especially when he knew that he’d probably fall into it unintentionally. He doesn’t want girls screeching at him every night as he stands on a stage and pours his soul into lyrics that no one outside the four of them could ever have hoped to understand. He doesn’t want his face plastered on the front covers of magazines or billboards or peeling posters on the side of venues, advertising their sold-out gigs.

If making music means fame, then he’d rather not make music at all.

Which is what makes him such a hypocrite, he supposes. He still fills up notebooks with random tunes and pieces of lyrics that’ll probably never become whole songs. Everything he does is fragmented and pointless and will never be seen by anyone but him, but the fact that it exists at all is enough to make him hate himself. He spends his nights working monotonous shifts at the local supermarket and his days playing endlessly on his guitars. He breaks out the acoustic, usually, but the electric makes an appearance if he’s got anger to play away.

Sometimes, despite having pushed away everyone that was enclosing him, he still feels trapped. Those are the nights that he drives out to the field.

He’s still driving the shitty little car that his parents got him when he finally managed to pass his test. The engine doesn’t sound right, and it hasn’t for a long time, but he hasn’t had a spare moment to go and get it checked out (or rather, he’s had many a spare moment, but not one that he’d care to spend driving to the garage). He knows full well that one day it’ll probably just pass out on him, and he’ll be left stranded either halfway down the street from his (dead parents’) house or halfway across the damn country in the middle of some kind of marsh.

He hopes it’s the latter.

The vehicle shudders when he slams the door shut after clambering in. His left hand taps the steering wheel restlessly as he uses the other to fish around at his feet, searching for his key. No one would ever try to steal this pile of crap so he never bothers locking it.

A small smile graces his features once his fingers brush against the cold metal. He fumbles for just a few more seconds before it’s pressed into his palm and is being slotted into the right place. Turning them around, he glances at the keychain still attached to the solitary key.

They’d made it the night after they’d almost burnt Charlie’s house down. They were more than a little merry, having found themselves drinking to numb the fact that they might never get enough cash together to try and start again. Phil’s guitars were in tact, and of course he had his spare keyboard at home, but the others weren’t so lucky, and neither were his notebooks. He lost a lot of work in that fire, and he knows that he’ll never forgive Charlie for it. Some of his best songs were lost that night, and all because the idiot was already so drunk that by the time he tried to light the cigarette his hands were trembling too much to hold it between his fingers.

That night was the first time he realised just how much he hated that band. As they’d sat there, pissed out of their minds, bending salvaged pieces of metal into key chains, all he could think about was the warmth boiling in his stomach at the idea of having to even step foot back into a studio with them again.

He rolls the window down and reaches for his pack of cigarettes, a grimace on his face. _I’ll start quitting tomorrow_ , he always tells himself. Yeah, right. If his father dying of lung cancer wasn’t enough to put him off the filthy habit, then he knows nothing ever will be.

Shaking his head at himself, he takes a drag and puts his foot down, holding the steering wheel with only one hand. He hopes that today isn’t one of those days when eighteen-year-old maniacs decide to drive around like they’re hoping to crash into something. Though he doesn’t blame them. This town is as deadbeat as it gets.

Sometimes, he just needs to get away. He needs to be totally alone, surrounded by nothing for miles, and the field is perfect for that. He’s only been a few times in the past, but every time he’s been a little transfixed by the serenity. His guitar is on the backseat, and his fingers are practically itching in anticipation.

Coughing quietly, he throws the burning remains of the cigarette out of the window, but he leaves it open. The air is fresh tonight for the first time in quite a while, and he wants to savour it whilst he can, so he draws in more than his fair share of it.  In the back of his mind, he thinks about how there are kids in countries choking because of the pollution, and here he is, snatching fresh air away from them.

He knows not to expect anyone else in the field. It’s the middle of summer, and he’s never seen anyone out there apart from during the harvest later in the year. He’s not disappointed when he turns and drives up the small road that he supposes is meant to be used for tractors. He’s not sure what they’d be harvesting, considering the fact that he’s been coming here for three years and never once has there been a crop grown, but it suits his purposes too well for him to question it.

The quiet is almost deafening when he stops the spluttering engine. Funny that, he thinks. Fame, the very thing he’s trying to get away from, is blinding, but quiet, the thing he’s running to, is deafening. Either way, he supposes, he is well and truly fucked.

He rolls his eyes at his own thoughts and steps out. He isn’t surprised when he feels the ground squelch beneath his feet, but he rolls his eyes again for the benefit of no one in particular. It’s not a major inconvenience, since he’s spent many a time sitting on the roof of his car instead of the ground. He’s almost found a way to make it bearably comfortable by now.

Clicking his tongue on the roof of his mouth, he glances up at the sky with a faint hint of curiosity. He’ll admit that he’s always been fascinated with constellations. He almost sickens himself with the idea of that cliché applying to him, but it’s not exactly something he can help. Though he can never remember their odd Latin names (they never sit right on his tongue), he can probably draw every single one that he’s ever seen from memory. There’s plenty a page in his notebooks that is filled with little sketches of them rather than the words that he’s meant to be writing.

Without much grace, he pulls the backdoor of his car open and reaches for the guitar bag. He bites his bottom lip in concentration as he carefully hoisters it up onto the roof, balancing it as well as he can. Then he works on hauling himself up, which he’s practically mastered by this point. Once he’s up, he finds his phone and turns on the backlight, giving him enough light to work by.

Tonight, he knows, isn’t going to be a night for any particularly heavy or serious work. He just needs to fucking breathe.

He unzips the bag and reaches for the notebook that’s resting on top of the instrument. His fingers dart along the neck of the guitar for a moment, plucking a string or two absently.

Then the pen is in his hands, and he starts to write.

Nothing really comes to him apart from short verses, which he sings quietly. It doesn’t sound right, though, and he knows that it comes from his own fault. He’s not writing, and hasn’t really been since the band split up, in a way that plays to the strengths of his rather limited vocal range, and you can hear the weakness in his voice as he struggles with the higher notes. Although he can often manipulate music to make it sound differently, he was, is, and always will be a songwriter, not a singer. Words do not come from his lungs naturally, and he often finds himself not being able to do his songs justice.

With shaking fingers, he puts down the book and picks up his guitar instead. Perhaps this isn’t a night for reminding himself of his many, many failing points.

Notes flow choppily from his fingers at first, but once he finds his rhythm he lets his eyes flutter shut. This is where he feels safe; this is home. He couldn’t be gladder that he doesn’t have a shift tonight, because he thinks that if he did he probably would have ended up burning the whole shop down out of anger.

It’s frustrating for him to work there. Everyone around him just so dull, all having given up on life aspirations. Technically, he knows that he falls within that bracket too, but at least he has music to put a smile on his face occasionally. He might have dissolved his band, and with it any hope he had of making something of himself in this world, but at least he still has a reason to get up in the mornings. Sometimes, at least.

He plucks out angry notes, and he realises that composing in this mind-set is never a good idea. His lyrics always reflect what’s pumping through his veins, be it hatred or alcohol or sadness or drugs or giddiness or hormones or simply sweet contentedness. Putting pen to paper is better than any form of therapy, and he will swear by that until the day he dies. Writing music keeps him sane, even if it almost tore him apart.

Fingers trembling with anger about nothing in particular, he plays the chords shakily, the notes ringing out unsteadily. There’s no one here to hear him as he fucks up, though, so he keeps going, playing unreservedly and unashamedly. As the tunes flow, the words start to find themselves on the tip of his tongue too, and he stops occasionally, reaching forward to write down the words on his mind.

Just as he’s about to write a particularly set of pretty odd words onto the paper, he hears it. His head snaps up.

His fingers grip the pen tightly as he chews the inside of his cheek, eyes searching the darkness around him. He blinks. The world is still, quiet, the residue of his notes long gone. But it was distinct; it was unmistakable. The sound he heard was a laugh. An honest-to-God, real human laugh.

It’s nothing like the laughs he’s heard recently. They’ve mostly been his own bitter chuckles at himself when he does something stupid, or entertains one of _those_ thoughts that have been becoming ever more frequently lately. Sometimes one of his colleagues at work will laugh, but it’s very much the same sound that comes from his mouth. Bitter, strained, slightly off-pitch.

He clears his throat. “Is there anyone there?”

It’s a stupid question. The kind of maniac that would laugh in the middle of the night whilst stood in a slightly damp field is certainly not the kind of maniac that he wants to strike up a conversation with. He prefers the kind of insanity that he makes music with.

Another loud laughs rings out. He yelps, loses his balance, and tumbles off the side of his car, and if it isn’t for the pair of hands that catch him from underneath and hold him up, he knows that he probably would have ended up passed out on the floor with a concussion.

He scrambles away from the strong hands back onto the roof. His breath is caught in his throat, and he doesn’t dare look back at the person that saved him. If it was even a person at all, he thinks. All of those old childhood nightmares start to flood back to mind, and he shudders.

Of course, he’s more rational than that. He doesn’t believe in monsters. It was a phase he grew out of. He had many phases. There was one where he had his fringe cut specifically so he would cover the entirety of his right eye, and the eyeliner that accompanied it had been smudged all day by the sloppily straightened hair. Phases are quickly outgrown (well, mostly anyway; he’s still rather partial of his side fringe). Who, at the age of twenty-three and in their rational mind, could really believe in monsters?

Still, poise and rationality have little to do with your reactions when you’re sat in the middle of a field at the dead of night with the only source of light being the backlight of your mobile phone.

“You okay?” A voice asks. The accent sounds too harsh in these northern fields, too southern, too proper. It’s too loud in the quiet around them, and he winces, skin crawling.

Mostly, he’s just kind of pissed off that this guy (and it is a guy, he can tell without hesitation from the voice) has interrupted his quiet reverie. Now that he’s been found out once, he figures that he’s probably going to have to find somewhere else to retreat to, especially if this guy turns out to be some kind of stalker.

“Fine, thanks.” He spits back, despite his reservations. Hurriedly, he closes his notebook with his trembling fingers and slides it back into the guitar bag. The instrument follows, concealing the book. Frankly, he’s more worried about his words being stolen than the guitar. A guitar can, no matter what some people say, be replaced, and he has others at home that he’s accumulated over the years. His notebook can’t.

After a moment of stiff silence, he lets out a breath that he hadn’t realised he was holding and looks down at the figure by the side of his car.

It isn’t exactly what he was expecting, but then he can’t pinpoint exactly what he had been expecting. Certainly, though, it wasn’t what he finds in front of his eyes.

The boy in front of him is probably a few years younger than himself, yet at the same time still manages to look at least a decade older. A word jacket is draped over the messy brunette’s shoulders, the sleeves too big and making him look like a child who’s playing dress up in their father’s clothes. Wide eyes stare back at him, a glimmer of intrigue in them, and he sighs.

“Who are you?” He asks quietly. He knows that he sounds more than just a little disinterested, but he’s not sure what he’s meant to find interesting in some kid that’s probably off his face and won’t remember any of this tomorrow. At least that means that he’ll be able to come back here without interruption.

It takes the boy a few moments to answer. He looks up at the sky for a few seconds as if pondering the question, before giving what is probably supposed to be a conclusive answer: “Dan.”

“Right.”

“Who are you?” Dan asks. The black haired man shakes his head, pushing air out of his lungs.

“Isn’t that a question? If we’re just gonna go for basics, though, I’m Phil.”

With a grin, Dan looks up at him as if Phil’s name is some kind of grand secret. They lock eyes for a moment or so, the contact burning like the flame that caught the back of his hand when Charlie set fire to the studio did.

Dan doesn’t answer before reaching up his hands and gripping the edge of the roof of Phil’s car. A thousand protests, most of them containing as much profanity as he can muster, are on the tip of Phil’s tongue as he watches the dirty, small boy haul himself up onto the roof, yet he finds himself speechless. Part of him knows that it wouldn’t even matter if he tried to stop Dan. There’s a little frown of concentration set on the brunette’s face, and his eyes are scrunched a little as if he’s focussing on something. Phil realises that the only way of stopping this kid getting on top of his car is probably to kick him in the face, and he’s an asshole, but he’s not _mean_.

Rather nimbly, the brunette pulls himself up with a quiet ‘oof’ sound. He sits himself down next to Phil, and his long fingers immediately reach for Phil’s guitar bag. This time, Phil doesn’t care about keeping up some of his manners, and he slaps Dan’s hand away. Not his guitar. Not his lyrics. Not the secrets that he pours out into his music. This kid can steal his fucking car for all he cares, but just not his words.

“What’s in the bag?” Dan asks curiously when he notices Phil’s irate response. He tucks his legs underneath himself and starts to rock back and forth a little, much in the way a restless toddler would, and Phil finds himself questioning whether this boy is actually real or a figment of his imagination.

He’s not high. He’s not even drunk. In fact, it’s been days since he touched anything apart from his cigarettes. Without the pressure of the band constantly looming over his head, he has found that he doesn’t need substance to get himself through the day anymore. He’s pretty sure that the cigarettes have only stayed as they provide him with something to do with his hands.

So, Dan’s probably real, then. Phil groans, kneading his forehead with his palms, and then looking up desperately. “Who knows?”

“Well, obviously you do. And unless you’ve got, like, a bomb in there or something, there isn’t too much to worry about. Even if you have, I promise to keep your terrorist plot safe.” Dan says, placing a closed fist over his heart and shutting his eyes for a second.

Normally, if it had been one of Phil’s friends making the joke, Phil probably wouldn’t have been able to keep a straight face. But here, out alone in his private place, he just leaves the deadpan expression on his features and shakes his head.

“Not a bomb. But, like I say, who knows? I could have a cold dead body in my bag. Or in the trunk of my car. I could be here to dispose of a body or something. And you have no way of knowing if any of that is true, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

Phil snorts at Dan’s offended face. He crosses his arms indignantly. This isn’t what he needs tonight. He isn’t in the mood for fun and games. Absently, he passes a glance down at the watch strapped to his wrist and realises that it’s nearly two in the morning. He has plenty of time in theory, but he knows that once it isn’t dark anymore the whole experience loses some of its therapeutic charm.

“Well. Pissy much.” Dan concludes after a moment or two, and Phil could punch him right there and then. The brunette starts to pick at a loose thread on his socks.

One of Phil’s many useless philosophies in life is that the world should never be totally silent. This is one of the times when he knows why he holds that believe. The silence that follows Dan’s sullen remark is crushing, and all Phil wants to do is reach out for his guitar and play something to fill it.

He isn’t sure what to say next. As a kid, he never had much trouble talking to people. But then again, as a kid he was happy. Even as an early teenager he was as content as people that age are. He was innocent, in fact. A lot of people told him to stop being so carefree. They feared that his naivety and blind faith in people would destroy him, so they stamped away his happiness. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to forgive the world for that.

“What are you doing out here at this time of night?” Dan eventually asks. Phil almost jumps at the sound, surprised that Dan is talking again and isn’t slipping off the roof to get away from him, grumpy bastard as he is.

“Composing, I guess.” Phil says simply, but Dan raises an eyebrow. Phil sighs. He hates people who are always demanding more from him. The word ‘elaborate’ was scribbled all over his books in school, but he always ignored it. He wrote the plain fact down, so what was the point in explaining it? “On my guitar. I write songs. Sometimes, anyway. It’s easier here than it is at home. Besides, I’m sure that you’re the one who invited himself onto my car. You’re the one that should be answering questions.”

Dan smiles at him, and Phil can’t help but return it with a small one of his own. Everything is lit too harshly by Phil’s phone. The light accentuates all the wrong parts of Dan’s face, from the way his cheekbones stick out a little to the bags under his eyes. Part of Phil wishes that he was more of a romantic, that he snuck candles out here to write by as part of some grand statement against modern technology. The thought quickly vanishes when he actually considers the many practical disadvantages of trying to use candles in the middle of a field during the night.

“Well. I was just wandering, around, I guess. I heard music, and I started to walk in the direction of it. I wasn’t really going anywhere, see, and it sounded good, so I thought I’d come and investigate.” Phil internally remarks that Dan obviously isn’t the type to be against elaboration. “As for why I was out in the first place, I just needed to get out. Do you get that sometimes? Like you’re being suffocated and everything is closing down around you, and you can’t breathe properly. No matter how much air you take into your lungs it’s not enough.”

Phil takes in a sharp breath. He stares at the boy in front of him. He doesn’t focus on his face at all, and yet all of his attention is on the skinny kid that just showed up in the middle of the night and described Phil’s whole life with ease.

“You’ve got to be a figment of my imagination.” Phil laughs, shaking his head at himself. He reaches into his back pocket for his packet of cigarettes, pulling them and his lighter out.

He doesn’t notice Dan’s raised eyebrow until he looks up from lighting his affectionately nicknamed cancer-stick. He isn’t sure whether the disapproval is because of the smoking or his previous words, so he doesn’t say anything, just takes a drag and looks back up at the sky.

“I’m pretty sure that unless you’re high or insane, you’re not making me up. And I don’t think that’s a joint, so you’re all good.”

Phil’s already pretty sure that Dan’s laugh is one of the nicest things that he’s ever heard. It rings out loudly, harshly almost, but it’s not jarring. It doesn’t make him flinch like most raw laughter. He almost finds himself appreciating it when Dan laughs at his own comment, almost finds himself joining in with the same kind of unreserved laughter, but he stops himself. It’s been a long time since he laughed properly. He’s saving it for something special.

“Not high, no. Not tonight, anyway. The cigarettes just help me relax a bit. Fucked up, really. I can’t breathe properly so I come out here and smoke away my lungs.”

He’s not really sure whom he’s addressing with that statement. Dan, perhaps. Unlikely. Himself? More probable. Or maybe he’s not addressing anyone. Who knows anymore?

“How about you?” Phil asks, and Dan’s eyebrow goes up again. It’s comical, almost. “Are you on something? There’s not many people I know that would have the balls to randomly climb on some stranger’s car roof.” The statement isn’t without a hint of poison, but Dan doesn’t seem to notice. He takes it as a joke and smiles as he replies.

“I don’t do that shit. I don’t… Well, I’m straight edge, you see.”

“Really?” Phil says, raising his eyebrows. It’s not that it particularly bothers him or anything, but he’s never actually met anyone that sticks to that lifestyle, and he can’t blame them for slacking on it. Phil’s not sure how he’d be able to get through the day without his cigarettes or his booze anymore, which may be unhealthy, but it’s not exactly uncommon. The economy is bust, the job market is fried and you have a whole host of unemployed people drinking their livers away as thoughtlessly as they breathe.

“Yup.” Dan affirms with a small smile, his fringe falling over his eyes. Then, without giving Phil a chance to say anything else, he quickly says, “So, you were saying you were composing on your guitar? Can you play it again? I was enjoying it.”

“Uh. I haven’t really done much. I was just making things up and writing some lyrics, I guess.” Phil stammers, shuffling back a touch.

“It sounded good, though. I mean, if you don’t want to play then I’ll just leave and hide somewhere and wait for you to start playing again.” Dan says with an amused smirk, and somehow Phil knows that the kid isn’t even joking. He rolls his eyes and reaches for his guitar. He hesitates for a moment before pulling out his notepad too, but he supposes that he’s not going to get any peace from this kid unless he gives him exactly what he wants.

He puts it down between them, opening it to the page he was on with ease as he tucked his pen inside to keep the place. His eyes scan the page and he looks down at the lyrics, humming the tune quietly as he starts to get a feel for it again. He tries not to let himself feel self-conscious, but it’s hard when he has the almost judging gaze of the boy on him. When he glances up for a moment, he sees the brunette staring at him with wide eyes and bottom lip between his teeth. Phil wonders why the other finds this so interesting to watch.

He plays the first few notes, letting his eyes fall shut and just listening to the music floating through the air. He opens his mouth to sing the first word, not having noticed Dan fiddling with his notebook, and startles when he hears another voice singing instead.

“A daydream spills from my corked head…”

“What are you doing?” Phil snaps, stopping playing instantly. He looks up at Dan half in horror, half in wonder. He hadn’t expected _that_. He hadn’t expected Dan to start singing, and he certainly hadn’t expected the words coming out of Dan’s mouth a thousand times better than they have ever come out of his, dripping off the brunette’s tongue as easily as anything.

“Do you want me to stop?”

Phil considers, biting the inside of his cheek. A voice in the back of his mind is screaming _yes, yes I want you to fucking stop right_ now, but instead of answering, Phil starts to play again.

Dan grins, picking up where he’d left off. He finds the melody with ease, whilst Phil finds himself unable to catch a breath as Dan sings his words. Dan’s the first person to _ever_ sing his lyrics correctly apart from himself, and he’d be lying if it didn’t make him almost buzz with excitement. The idea that someone else, that another real, live, breathing human being might actually be able to hear and play his music for how it should be played and heard, makes a smile break out on his lips despite himself. “Breaks free of my wooden neck, left a nod over sleeping waves…” Dan trails off, laughing to himself before muttering under his breath, “If you’re not on drugs, then how the fuck do you come up with these lyrics?”

“I have a weird mind, okay?” Phil says with a slight grin, continuing to play through Dan’s comment. He omits the fact that some of these lyrics have been circling in his head from when he was playing a few days ago and when he definitely was not sober.

“Like bobbing bait for bathing cod, floating flocks of candled swans, slowly drift across wax ponds…”

Phil stops abruptly on the last note, making Dan look at him with a small frown. “That’s all I can do. I’m really pissed, because this sounds really good, but I just can’t get it right.” Rubbing his eyes, Phil looks back down at the notebook, the words squirming around as his vision fixes itself.

This often happens to him. He’ll manage to get the first part of a song down to perfection, but anything past one or two minutes in doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s a good job he never continued with his band, because he knows that he’d have been a shitty writer if he tried to actually write anything studio-ready or mainstream friendly.

“Hm. Give me that.” Dan says, making grabby hands at Phil’s guitar. Phil hesitates, pinching the strings nervously as he thinks of all the things Dan might do with his guitar. Run off with it to sell it, drop it and crack it, scratch it somehow, break the neck, kill Phil with it. God knows who this kid actually is, what he’s capable of doing. Phil knows better than to be fooled by a pretty face and a pair of pleading eyes, but he still finds himself relaxing his fingers and actually contemplating giving his guitar to this stranger.

Phil remembers the last time he let someone else play his guitar. It was Charlie, funnily enough. The night before Phil decided to call it quits, Phil drove to his house and, without so much as a word, they sat there and played all night, Charlie practically hammering the drums and Phil’s fingers going red raw from the strings of various guitars. His back ached by the end, his eyes were drooping, his head pounding, and yet he’s not sure if he’s ever felt more alive.

It was the moment he realised that that he decided to quit.

Tentatively, he hands it over. He watches as Dan tries to get a feel for the weight in his hands, shuffling around a little to find the right position in which to sit. The brunette nods once he’s comfortable, and then Phil watches his fingers. The notes come out choppy at first, rough almost, as if Dan hasn’t played in a while, but it’s not long before the melody that Phil had been playing is picked up by the boy playing before him.

Phil’s mouth practically drops open with awe when it does. He stares at this boy as he picks up the music better than Phil has ever seen anyone do by ear, barely even noticing the few and far in between slips and mistakes that Dan makes.  

When he starts to play the melody that follows on from what Phil had written, Phil feels his heart start to pound faster. The first thought that runs through his head is _God, that sounds beautiful_ , and he almost wants to punch himself for thinking it, though he can’t quite grasp why. It _does_ sound beautiful. It resonates in the emptiness around them, overpowering the quiet humming of bugs and wind and distant cars. Phil opens his mouth to start singing, head slightly faint, and keeps his voice quiet to try and hide how inferior it is to Dan’s.

“The men all played along to marching drums, and boy did they have fun behind the sea…” He tries out, testing the words on his tongue. He starts to write them down as he does, scribbling them messily onto the paper. When he gets to the end of the next line, his voice trails off, leaving only Dan playing to fill the silence around them.

Dan stops when he realizes that Phil has stopped singing, looking back up at the black haired man with slight apprehension on his face. Phil almost finds it funny how it’s only now, now after Dan has clambered onto his roof and demanded to hear Phil play and disturbed the only quiet time that Phil ever gets, Dan is apprehensive, timid, almost.

“Was that okay then? Because I might have more…” The hint of self-doubt in Dan’s voice makes Phil’s stomach boil. Hell, Phil might be as narcissistic as he is self-deprecating, but even he can admit that Dan has just as much if not more potential in song writing than he ever had, and here Dan is, having the cheek to lack confidence in himself. It’s a thought as hypocritical as hell, and Phil knows it, but that doesn’t stop it from making Phil’s next few words contain just a little anger.

“Fuck, okay? It was perfect, Jesus Christ.” He says, looking up at Dan with an open mouth. “Do more of that. Play as much as you can. Fuck, just don’t stop.”

Dan grins. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh yeah btw all of the chapters are probably going to be really fucking long oops (this is 6k end me)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The stuff about Phil at the circus is mostly based on a personal story, so I like Phil haven’t been to a circus in a very long time, so I based the actual circus bit off of MirrorMask and how they show it there, so if it’s inaccurate I apologise! I also want to clarify that ‘f*g’ is not just used as a homophobic slur in England - it also means cigarette, so that’s the context that it’s used in here.

**Chapter Two: A Fever You Can't Sweat Out**

That’s how the rest of the night pans. Phil dabbling, Dan picking up the fragments of songs that Phil comes up with, Phil singing and then Dan singing and then Phil singing again, occasionally the pair of them attempting to harmonize a little, and then Phil fucking up and Dan laughing at him with a wide grin. Usually, that would have made Phil angry, but when he’s staring at Dan’s really quite wonderful, unreserved smile, he can’t help but find a small one of his own playing on his lips.

Phil can’t help but smile fondly as he thinks about the memories of the night before. He wanders around the isles of the same store that he has a shift in later, picking up the few things that he needs to make sure that he doesn’t starve. His mind, however, his far from his shopping.

It’s been a very long time since Phil was happy. Even when he still had this band, even when he was mucking around with Charlie and Pj and Emma on long, sleepless nights, he doesn’t think he was ever really _happy_. It’s become a foreign feeling to him, one that, whilst he was at that field watching that beautiful boy sing for him, he couldn’t quite place. But now, now that he’s away from that scene, now that he’s carrying out the mundane tasks of his every day life, he can see that happiness is the only thing that could have made him feel as he did for those few hours.

His smile falters slightly when his mind inevitably arrives at the fact that it’s incredibly unlikely Phil is ever going to feel that same happiness again. At some point during the night, Phil must have nodded off, because he woke up at six am with a sore throat and stiff limbs, still on the roof of his car. It’s a minor miracle that he didn’t fall off it at some point during the night, but that was far from the first thing that he noticed.

Dan was nowhere to be seen.

Was it all a dream? Did Phil take something that he shouldn’t have done and made up the whole thing? Or did Dan just leave him at some point with absolutely no intention of coming back, as made quite clear by the fact that even after searching for a solid half an hour, Phil couldn’t find a single trace of Dan having made an attempt to leave him some contact information. A phone number would have sufficed, but it doesn’t seem like Dan deemed Phil worthy of that.

Phil isn’t sure whether the idea of Dan not wanting to see him again or the idea of Dan being completely made up is worse.

He gives the girl at the checkout an absent nod. She sometimes works the same shift as him, but he’s never made an effort to learn her name, or given her much thought at all. Still, she has a friendly smile, so he doesn’t completely ignore her like he would most of his sort-of-but-not-really acquaintances.

“Can I get a box of Mayfairs as well please? Just the ten pack,” He asks before she starts ringing up his things, and she nods with a smile, turning around to open up the sealed cabinet behind the counter.

Whilst she starts to sort the things he’s buying, his eyes find themselves inspecting the shop window, reading the posters that have been tacked up. Some of them are months old, some of them he can remember putting up himself, but one or two are new, and one of them in particular catches his eye.

 “There’s a circus in town?” He says out loud, and he hears the checkout girl hum quietly.

“Yeah. Apparently they’re quite good, too. My friend went last night. Not the best she’s ever seen, but they had a lot of young acts with good potential, she said. She’s into that kind of thing.”

Phil nods, not exactly interested in making conversation. His eyes flicker down to the date on the poster, and he realises that last night was their opening night. Pulling his bottom lip up between his teeth and chewing on it gently, he stares at the poster, not quite sure what he’s thinking, until the girl asks him for his money.

He pulls out his wallet from his back pocket and starts to fish around for the right sized notes. He hands over two twenty-pound notes, and starts to put all of his things into the bags as she sorts out his change.

His thoughts are far from focussed on his shopping, though, as his mind starts to buzz. _The Harrison Family circu_ s. Dan never mentioned his last name. He didn’t sound like he was from around here either. And Dan was strong, it was evident in the way that he was so easily able to haul himself up onto Phil’s car roof almost gracefully. It would make sense…

“Are you okay, Phil?” The girl asks him, and he snaps his eyes up to face her. He realises that he’s been stood still for a couple of minutes, a plastic bag in one hand and a packet of cigarettes in the other. 

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. Just thinking about that circus is all. I haven’t been to a circus since I was a kid.” He says, giving her a soft smile to try and assure her that he’s okay. Not that she probably cares beyond common civility and politeness, though.

“Why don’t you go tonight then? I don’t think it’ll be sold out, knowing people round here.” He bites the inside of his cheek, nodding thoughtfully as he finishes the last of his packing, throwing the blue pack of cigarettes into a bag alongside a loaf of bread.

She’s right. It almost definitely won’t be sold out – there aren’t that many young families around here anymore, and besides, it’s a school night. He doubts very many people will be going at all.

Looking back at the poster, he reads the subtitle carefully. He has to admit that it intrigues him. ‘ _Like a fever you can’t sweat out_ ’.

“Hey, thanks,” he says to the girl quickly, a small smile playing on his lips. She grins back at him, her own smile less faded than his, but he can see it already beginning to falter. She’s only a couple of years younger than him. It won’t be long before she starts to find it as hard as he does to stretch the corners of his lips.

Bags digging into his fingers, he leaves the shop quickly, not wanting to make any more small talk. His weekly quota of talking to strangers had been far exceeded within about half an hour of getting talking with Dan, so he’s really not up for much more yet. Except if it were with Dan, he thinks, funnily enough.

Coughing, he all but throws his shopping into the boot of his car and then gets in himself, sitting down and cursing when he realises that he left his cigarettes in the bag. Out of the corner of his eye, however, he catches sight of the circus poster again, and he stops, taking a mental note of the location.

He’s just going to get out of the house, he tells himself. Just as a little bit of fun. Something to do other than sit inside all evening after his relatively short midday shift in a few hours.

He really is a liar.

-

It’s been some fifteen years since he went to a circus.

He can remember being just a child (and a relatively short one at that) clinging onto his Granddad’s hand as he guided him through the crowds of people, trying to get to where the seats were without losing his grandson. Phil was a mischievous youngster and the old man was probably worried about Phil running away if he saw something that caught his curiosity, but Phil was far too struck by everything around him to do any such thing.

All Phil really remembers about that night is the overwhelming lights and the almost sickening smell of candyfloss mixed with various fried foods. He recalls faintly shaking as he stood up after the show to take a picture with one of the performers and his Granddad, but he’s not sure if that’s an actual memory, or whether he invented it after being shown the picture that was taken.

It was a picture that his Grandfather cherished. It was on the mantelpiece of his grandparents’ house until Phil’s own parents gutted it when both parties of the elderly couple were dead. Now the picture is on Phil’s mantelpiece, and he couldn’t help but spend a few moments standing in his lounge, eyes lingering on the captured sight of his younger self, stood there with a stiff and uncomfortable smile in front of an elephant and her handler.

He hesitates again when he’s about to get out of his car in the field that’s being used as a car park. He’s not one to throw himself into situations that he isn’t one thousand per cent comfortable in, and right now he’s about the opposite of comfortable.

What if he’s right – what if Dan is here? What’s that going to make the brunette think? That Phil is some kind of crazy stalker? He doesn’t want that, he doesn’t even want Dan to know that he was here. He’s just curious, because this theory really does make sense to him, but it will also tell him that he shouldn’t get his hopes up too high about having made a new friend, or even a possible new musical partner. The circus is only in town for about a week, and then Dan will be gone away, on the road to far away places.

“Stop being a coward,” he tells himself, grabbing his wallet and packet of cigarettes from the car seat next to him. Both of them go into their own pockets in his jeans, and then he’s out of the car, wading through the sea of other vehicles to get to the Big Top.

For the number of cars in the lot, there are very few people who are here to see the actual show milling around. He looks around with an almost childlike curiosity at the hurried performers who are running around here there and everywhere, flicking between the trailers that Phil can just about make out to the tent itself. It almost feels as if there were more performers than guests, but then Phil hears the cheering from within the tent and figures that a lot of the people are probably already sat down, waiting for the show to start.

He tries to stuff his hands into his pockets, only to find they are already almost full with his other possessions, so he ends up with just his fingers stuck in them, his hands at an awkward angle. Someone passes him an odd glance as he walks towards the small line where he can tell tickets are being sold, but he’s not sure whether it’s because of the odd positioning of his hands or the fact that a man in his twenties is at a circus alone.

He did contemplate bringing Charlie, but then he figured that his ex might not be the best person to bring along when searching for a boy that Phil will admit he’s perhaps just slightly attracted to. Then his mind jumped to Pj, but he’s barely even spoken to the guy for weeks. Pj was angry, of course he was, with Phil’s sudden and unjustified decision to quit the band, and the best friend that Phil grew up quickly became little more than a stranger. Someone that, if needed, would be able to write a small eulogy for Phil and read it out at his funeral with feeling, but not someone that would want much to do with Phil other than at such a special occasion as a wake.

After those two had been eliminated, he only really had Emma left, and there was no way he was taking her. She wouldn’t shut up throughout the whole performance. For a shy girl, she really can talk.

It’s not until he’s in the queue that the stench of food really hits him, and for a moment he thinks he’s going to be sick. The smells of salty sweat and sweetened candyfloss and heavy fried foods are an overpowering cocktail that Phil wonders how anyone can stand, but it doesn’t seem to be bothering anyone else.

There is a family in front of him, a group of three young children and two rather stressed looking young parents, and he has to grit his teeth to stop himself from yelling at them for the sheer amount of noise they’re making. Their squeals of excitement and the strong smells and the already queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach about the possibility that he might actually be able to find Dan are all making him want to run straight back to his car, to drive home and get some much needed rest after staying up so late last night and then having to work during the day too.

But he can’t do that. He won’t do that.

He takes a deep breath and braces himself, stepping forward as the queue moves quite quickly. There’s a girl to one side of him juggling unenthusiastically, her mouth set in a hard line as she watches the pins. She tosses them and catches them with little effort, making it look as easy as breathing, and he wonders how long it took for her to learn to be able to do it like that.

His attention is pulled away from her when he hears the older woman in the booth say a loud ‘next’ to indicate that it’s his turn. He shuffles forwards, taking his hands out of his pockets so that he can take out his wallet.

His mumbled request for a ticket isn’t met with a verbal answer. Instead, she smiles at him stiffly and starts to flick through a small booklet in front of her. He doesn’t look at her as he searches through his wallet for the right amount of cash.

“Enjoy the show, sir.” She tells him as she pushes the ticket towards him once she’s seen that he actually does have money in his hands. He hands over the coins in exchange, nodding curtly.

Pushed out of the line by the next customer, he finds himself with no time left to contemplate before being half-shoved into the entrance of the tent.

The first thing that strikes him is how totally different the world in here is to the world outside. The atmosphere is literally _buzzing_. There are children running around, laughter ringing in his ears loudly, gazing at stalls and begging for money from their parents or even each other. There are adults in clusters, chatting and smiling, a lot of them now starting to make their way to the seating area. There’s a few younger couples, some of whom he recognises from school a few years ago, and he catches sight of one of them kissing a little too passionately for being in public in the seating.

He steers clear of them as he wades through everyone and tries to find a seat. He picks something about halfway up, giving himself a good view but allowing himself to keep the anonymity of not being in the front or back rows. There’ll be enough people here, he thinks, when everyone is sat down, to hide him from Dan’s eyes. If Dan is even a performer.

If Dan is even here at all, he reminds himself.

He takes his place, chewing at his lips. In the back of his mind he chastises himself for not having bought some kind of food with him just to keep his heads and mouth occupied, but it’s too late now if he doesn’t want to risk losing his place, so he just leans back in the seat and settles for picking at his nails instead.

It doesn’t take very long for people to start filing in, and he watches them with some curiosity. There are far many more people here than he expected, so he finds it difficult to keep up with individual faces, but he notices the small girl with the burn across her face, the old woman clutching a crutch like a lifeline, and the kid that’s about fifteen years old who, to the horror of many of the people in the audience, runs down through the crowd, making others stumble, and jumps over the barrier into the centre ring. He dashes behind the curtain which Phil supposes separates the performers from the ring, leaving behind him a group of people mumbling about how ‘young people always act inappropriately these days’.

It makes the corners of Phil’s lips prick up into a small smile.

By the time the large floodlights flicker off, he’s half falling asleep. The roar of the crowd as they realise the show is about to start is enough to snap his eyes open, and he sits up straight. He can feel his pulse quickening a little as the music plays, deep and thunderous. It makes his skin crawl.

Swallowing, he claps along with the others as a middle-aged man wearing a broad smile steps out into the middle of the ring. Phil’s practically transfixed as he inspects the man’s attire – a long, sweeping coat made out of deep crimson fabric, just about touching the floor, with a black waistcoat underneath and a pair of similarly coloured trousers. He wears a top hat, and tips it to the crowds as he waits for them to die down before he begins speaking into the microphone.

The words go in one of Phil’s ears and goes straight of the other as he feels his stomach jolt. His head turns to the corner of the curtain, where he swears to God that he saw movement, just in time to see the small head poking around for just a moment, a wide grin on his face.

For a moment, he’s half-convinced that it’s the same kid that ran down through the crowds earlier. But the features of the teenager’s face look very much the same as they did when illuminated by the backlight of Phil’s phone. And he knows for certain exactly who it is when the kid turns around and somehow manages to spot Phil, staring at him dead on with a slack jaw and eyes the size of the moon.

As quickly as Dan appeared, he’s gone again, and Phil’s standing up, stumbling through rows and rows of people who are far more interested in the show then the lanky black-haired man clambering over them. He mumbles a few apologies under his breath as he goes, tripping up once or twice. It’s a minor miracle that he even manages to get out of the crowds, and when he does he realises that there’s no way he’s getting behind that curtain.

“Fuck,” he mutters to himself, looking around the abandoned entrance to the Big Top, which was only half an hour ago full to bursting. His eyes flicker to the fading light outside, and he can hardly believe it when he sees the small shape scurrying away from the tent.

Without a second’s thought, he dashes out, desperate to get to Dan before the boy runs off far away to stop Phil ever finding him again, but he finds himself stopped by an arm that’s thrust in front of him.

“Everything okay, sir?”  The same woman that sold him his ticket asks, and he looks down at her, nodding unconvincingly.

“Just need a fag, is all. Great show you got here,” she blushes a little at the compliment and relaxes her arm, giving Phil the leeway he needs to start running again.

“Dan!” He calls after the figure, who’s running as fast as Phil is now, and he starts to regret the lack of exercise he’s done since he left school as he feels his lungs start to burn, “Dan, what are you-”

Just like that, Dan stops, and Phil almost skids into him as he slips on the mud when he tries to stop too. He falls forward, landing on his hands with a quiet groan. He forces back tears when his palms start to sting and he feels the blood starting to drip down his knee through his jeans, and curses himself for being such a bloody child. He always has been one to cry at nothing.

He looks up to see uncurling fingers in front of his face. Blinking rapidly, he swallows and reaches up to take the hand, allowing it to pull him up.

The soft glow of the circus lights behind them creates a dim haze around Dan, making the boy look almost ethereal, and Phil finds himself at a loss for words. A small frown in set on the brunette’s face, and Phil thinks that it really doesn’t suit him in comparison to that smile that he wore practically all evening last night.

“What are you doing here?” Dan asks after a moment or two, and Phil snaps back into the reality of the situation. He drops Dan’s hand and looks down at his own, inspecting the damage with a wince. They’re grazed pretty badly, his right one bleeding and muddy, and he shakes his head. That’s going to make it at least uncomfortable to play his guitar for a couple of days.

“I don’t just go to fucking fields for entertainment, Dan. It’s a circus. How was I meant to know that-”

“It seems like an awful coincidence to me, Phil. I show up one night and the next you just happen to end up at the circus my family owns?” Dan says with narrowed eyes, his head drooping forward a little. He doesn’t even really sound that angry, Phil doesn’t think. No, he almost thinks that Dan sounds a little embarrassed, and he realises that he probably is.

“I promise you, it was a coincidence, okay? I was shopping and I saw the poster in the window and I just thought it’d be a good night is all. I’m really sorry.” Phil keeps his voice as steady as he can and stops himself from rubbing the back of his neck. He knows that it’s something he does a lot when he lies (along with tapping his foot; he can remember how Charlie’s eyes flickered down to Phil’s still foot when he announced that he was leaving the band, just to make sure that Phil wasn’t lying).

Phil doesn’t really blame Dan for being unconvinced. Still, he tries to ignore the irritated look on Dan’s face and asks him quietly, “Is your last name Harrison, then? Dan Harrison?”

“No.” Dan says, shaking his head again. With a groan, he digs into his forehead with his palms, massaging gently, “Howell. My name is Dan Howell.”

“Then why is the family circus called Harrison? I assume that your parents own it,” Dan starts to shuffle around uncomfortably on his feet, and Phil tilts his head to one side slightly.

“No. They don’t. It belongs to my Aunt and Uncle. They’re Harrisons.”

Phil almost opens his mouth to ask more, but then he stops himself. He can see the way that Dan’s eyes are trained on the floor, the way that his fringe has fallen over his face in a rather pathetic way, the way that his lips have set into a small frown that makes even Phil’s heart fall.

“Look, Dan. I really am sorry about this circus thing. I get it if you, y’know, didn’t want to see me again or something.”

“What? You think that’s it?” Dan asks, looking up at Phil with an incredulous expression on his face. Phil frowns, looking back down at his hands as he mumbles,

“So that wasn’t why you didn’t want to see me?”

“Fuck, no? I didn’t want you to know because I don’t really like anyone knowing. It’s not a normal lifestyle, Phil. I really liked hanging out with you and I really liked making music with you, and I kind of wanted to do that again and I didn’t want to fuck up my chances of that ever happening by being some fucking circus freak kid.” Dan rambles, his voice cracking as he talks. Phil wonders if he’s crying, but he doesn’t glance up to see.

“Why the hell would that bother me?”

It’s a question that Dan doesn’t seem to be prepared to answer. The brunette opens his mouth and stumbles on whatever he was going say, letting out only a small, almost choked noise before he clamps his mouth shut again. Phil looks up now, if only to see the expression on Dan’s face, and smiles softly. Dan truly does look shocked, and it’s odd to Phil.

To Phil, all that really matters is the music. It’s why even after he quit his toxic band he still continued to dabble, even if it was of no real benefit to anyone. It didn’t even really benefit himself, at the end of the day. All it did was remind him of bad memories and send him into downward spirals that ended with him smoking the life out of his lungs.

Honestly, he doesn’t exactly care if Dan’s in a circus, apart from the fact that it would mean Dan having to move on pretty quickly. He wouldn’t really care if Dan were a talking cow with the amount of musical talent the boy possesses.

“Wait, so do you still want to maybe hang out again sometime? Because I know I left you without really a word last night but you looked so tired so I just-”

“Yes.”

It only takes that small word for Dan’s face to shine brighter than the lights of Las Vegas city at night.

**Author's Note:**

> new chaptered fic ayyyyyy (and it's a bloody long one too). i hope you're as excited as i am!!


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